Under 16 Drug Offences (4083_16)

Request

1.How many arrests have your police force made for the offences of supplying controlled drugs or possession with intent to supply controlled drugs in the last year (2015 calendar year) for young persons aged sixteen or under?
2. Please provide if possible the figures for each age group i.e. ten, eleven, twelve etc and also broken down by gender for each of the two offences, breaking the alleged offences down by Class A and Class B drugs.
3.For those children who were arrested AND were aged 13 or under please provide specific details on the charge they were arrested on and the exact type and class of drug they were alleged to have been involved with.

Response

Please find attached our response.

Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.